Mindfulness-based Intervention and Young Children's Screen Time

Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Screen Time Exposure

Treatments: Behavioral: Mindfulness-based intervention on parent empowerment in reducing children's screen time (MORE)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07083661

RD/2025/1.7

Details and patient eligibility

About

This research proposal aims to explore the effectiveness of the mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on reducing young children's screen time (ST) and caring parents' psychological and social issues in Hong Kong.

Full description

The research design was a two-arm waitlist, randomised controlled study with a focus group interview with 60 participants. The intervention integrates the mindfulness-based component into a modified Hands-on Parent Empowerment-20 (HOPE-20) programme, and is named as MORE (i.e. Mindfulness-based intervention On parent empowerment in REducing children's screen time). The intervention consists of 6 weeks of MBI training, each lasting for 2 hours, led by an experienced certified mindfulness teacher. The intervention programme consists of three components: (1) skill part - 4 lessons talk about parenting skills (Praising, token system, response cost, planned ignorance, quiet zone); (2) skill part - 2 lessons talk about child-parent communication (building relationship, communication strategies); and (3) mindfulness part - mindfulness-based training. The primary outcomes are young children's ST and children's disruptive behaviour. Feasibility outcomes include recruitment rate, retention rate, and acceptability of the interventions. Secondary outcomes include parent-child relationships, parents' perceptions of their abilities to manage the demands of parenting, parental stress level, and social support adequacy. The proposal also includes plans for focus group interviews with participants to gather qualitative data. Analyses will include descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-square test, Pearson's product-moment correlations, One-way ANOVA. A p-value < 0.05 will be taken as the level of statistical significant. The 95% Confidence interval (CI) around the differences will be calculated. For qualitative data, the results will be analyzed descriptively and narratively. The proposal highlights the potential of MBI for reducing young children's ST, as well as improving children-parent relationships, enhancing the efficacy and satisfaction level of the parents, and reducing the stress level of the parents.

Enrollment: 60 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• parent-child dyads resident in Hong Kong;
• child being between 2 and 6- year; and
• child with normal intellectual ability.

Exclusion criteria

• children with major developmental problems, history of domestic violence, drug abuse, or mental illness in the family;
• being unable to communicate and understand Cantonese as the intervention will be conducted in Cantonese; and
• parent-child dyads previous participation in mindfulness-based training for less than 6 months.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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60 participants in 2 patient groups

Mindfulness-based intervention on parent empowerment in reducing children's screen time (MORE)

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention consists of 6-session mindfulness-based intervention. Each session last for 2 hours. The training will be led by an experience certified mindfulness teacher.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mindfulness-based intervention on parent empowerment in reducing children's screen time (MORE)

Waistlist control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants will be required to maintain their usual daily activities without begin any mindfulness and skills programme for 6-week